This Week's Letter

 It's so difficult to do something rather than curl up into a protective ball. It's time to write my two Republican Senators. But what about? 

The insane tariffs Trump has threatened to impose on the world Wednesday? The gutting of vital federal services? The ongoing war against people and organizations he deems as insufficiently subservient to him? The disappearances of migrants, including some here legally, with no due process?

Let's take that last one, I guess.

Dear Senator and Staff--

It seems every letter I've written to you over the last few months consists of me begging you, begging Congress, to check President Trump's flouting of the rule of law. 

I'm writing another such letter now. Over the weekend, CBS News reported on the Venezuelan deportees summarily picked up and deported to a notoriously violent El Salvador prison with no due process. Contra the White House's assertions, their reporting found only 22% of the men had any kind of criminal record in the US. The more evidence that comes out about the government's process of identifying gang members, the shakier their case becomes. They seem to have made life-changing determinations about guilt or innocence based in many cases on evidence as flimsy as tattoos and hearsay. 

Maybe the government is correct. Maybe these are violent gang members simply posing as hairdressers, fathers, and artists. Maybe CBS and other investigators are mistaken. But how would we know? The government has declined to offer evidence in court, claiming wartime powers from an obscure eighteenth-century act. 

If these men are guilty of crimes, arrest them, try them, and let the system we have in place convict and sentence them. But carting them off to a dictator's brutal prison with no chance for them to see or challenge the evidence against them? That's barbaric.

I hear other stories of people like Rumeysa Ozturk, people legally here on student visas or even green cards, being "disappeared" right off the street. These people aren't even being charged with a crime. They just did or said something the government didn't like. I used to think such occurrences existed only as story beats in tales of dictatorships. I'm stunned that such stories are happening here in the US. I had thought that was impossible. 

I am not at all comforted by Secretary Rubio's insistence that such acts are legal. The government's punishing people for nothing more than exercising freedom of speech is wrong regardless of whether it's technically allowed.

I'm begging you to stand up for due process and civil rights protections for all. In our system, everyone, even those people that anger or scare us, have rights. They get to see their charges and challenge evidence against them. Once it becomes OK for the government to unilaterally decide someone is guilty and inflict punishment simply because they said so, we're all in danger.

Due process protects everyone. Lack of due process endangers everyone.

But I need you--Congress--to assert that more forcefully. Right now, the White House and their spokespeople are suggesting that rights and due process are only for some, not for all. That's anathema to our system. It betrays our pledge to liberty and justice for all. 

There's so much more I want from Congress: rein in DOGE's haphazard gutting of federal services, stop President Trump's market-melting tariffs, stand up to continued Russian aggression in Ukraine, tell the administration that we're not going to start World War III over Greenland or Canada. But I try to limit these letters to one ask at a time.

So please: stand up for due process for everyone. I know it's not easy or popular to do so. But it's right to do so.

Thanks.